


The Making of Harold Saxon

by VaguelyDownwards



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e11 Utopia, Episode: s03e12 The Sound of Drums, Episode: s03e13 Last of the Time Lords, Gen, Spoilers, slightly AU to make the timelines match up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 11:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VaguelyDownwards/pseuds/VaguelyDownwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Master's plan for Earth has a lot of tedious details that aren't really worth his time. Fortunately for him, the Moriarty Firm is very good with details.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The man sitting across the desk from Sebastian wore a suit that put his to shame. Which would have been impressive, actually, if Sebastian weren’t well used to meeting with men who thought they owned the world. And Jim believed in always presenting the right image. He made sure that Sebastian always dressed to impress, and Sebastian, in turn, was thoroughly unmoved by all the fine Italian custom bullshit that paraded by. If a foul-mouthed army reject like himself could wear a suit, so could anybody.

“So, Colonel,” the prospective client began, “May I call you Colonel?”

“You can call me Father Christmas for all I care. I feel obligated to tell you, though, that I’m not actually a colonel. Not anymore.”

“But you were, once. I think titles are much more interesting than names, don’t you?”

“Er, sure, if you say so.” Something about the man made him uncomfortable. Sebastian had dealt with plenty of clients who liked to pretend they were on the verge of burning down the building just to look intimidating. He’d learned not to take them too seriously. But if this man had said he would burn down the world, Sebastian would believe him. “Speaking of names and titles,” he said, “You haven’t given us one. What should I call you?”

He smiled. “You may call me Master.”

Sebastian started to laugh, then realised he was serious. _He actually expects me to… Christ, the loonies I meet in this job. Alright, well, anything for a client._ “Well, uh, Master—” he had to strain not to roll his eyes— “What can the Moriarty Firm do for you?” He conjured up his most businessman-like smile.

“I’d like to run for Prime Minister.”

Sebastian nodded. “PR isn’t our biggest department, but we do a pretty good job. Time frame? Five years, ten, twenty?”

“Now. I understand the election’s this week.”

“Ha ha. Very funny, Mr. Master.”

“I wasn’t joking. And it’s just Master. _The_ Master, if necessary.”

“You do understand how elections work, right? If we pull everything we’ve got, we can make you more popular than the Queen, probably in a fortnight if we all worked overtime. But this… there are requirements to meet, bribes to pay, mountains of paperwork. Forms that were due a month ago. Records to smudge. Most of any job is just putting money in the right pockets, but some things take time, and that’s one thing we can’t make more of.”

The Master smiled coldly. It was a reptilian expression that Sebastian had only ever seen when Jim was at his most dangerous. “I can.”


	2. Chapter 2

“The Master. _Really._ I don’t know how you put up with them, m’dear, but I’m thoroughly glad you do. I will play nice if I have to, but only if I’m strapping explosives to pigeons afterwards.”

“And leave me with the cleanup, I assume. I dunno, boss. Something about this guy, I’m inclined to take him at his word. And anyway, there’s the box.”

“Yes, yes, a magic box, sounds _fascinating_.”

“It’s real, boss. I saw it. Looks just like one of those old police boxes. Haven’t seen one in years, but that’s what it looks like. On the outside, anyway. Inside… it’s not possible. But it is. A whole mansion’s worth of rooms inside. I walked in and out of it a dozen times, and he just smiled and nodded, as if he’d been watching that reaction for years.”

“And it’s a time machine.”

“And it’s a time machine.”

Jim did a weird thing with his face. He seemed to have a whole catalogue of facial expressions previously unknown to mankind; this was apparently a new entry. “Sebastian, it couldn’t _possibly_ be that you’re having me on, could it? Because while I appreciate the phenomenal amount of sheer gall that would take, I really can’t be bothered to find a new chief of staff right now.”

“I promise you, boss. This was real. I saw it.”

Jim scowled. “I’ll have to meet him. There’s no other option. I _hate_ it when clients need personal work. They’re always so needy.” He sighed and shook his head. “Once I’ve seen this box for myself, then I’ll decide if we take the job.”

“Uh, thing is, boss, you sort of already have. Or you will.”

“What?”

“Future you. Or something. You saw the box and agreed on the contract. We’ve already begun early stages of the planning process. Except it hasn’t happened to _you_ you. Yet.”

“This is going to get very complicated, very quickly.

“Yes. Yes it is.”

Jim looked thoughtful. “This could be good. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a project that required any significant portion of my attention.”

“Could be, yeah.”

“Or it could be a serious headache.”

“I’m worried it’s that second one.”

“Time machine, you said?”

“I did. Several times now.”

“And he’s willing to let us use it for whatever we like.”

“Apparently it’s broken, but it still works better than any time machine I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m sure. You missed one. Going blind in your old age, I imagine.” Jim pointed over the edge of the rooftop to where something vaguely person-shaped was moving.

“Fuck you, Jim. I strategically wounded him.” He shouldered his rifle and took aim.


	3. Chapter 3

They had lunch at the end of the universe. Some agreements could be sealed with a handshake, and others by pages of legally-binding contracts, but this called for something with a bit more flair. There were just the three of them: the Consulting Criminal, the Sniper, and the Master. Sebastian thought that so far, the experience was not half so extravagant as Douglas Adams would have had people believe, but the view of the dying sky had a certain futile beauty.

Under the recommendation of the Master, Sebastian had packed a selection of his favourite weapons alongside the sandwiches and lemonade. He carefully laid them out on the cliche checked blanket while the Master and Moriarty discussed business. The rocky peak they had landed on was mostly inaccessible on foot, but the toothy Futurekind roaming about on the ground looked hungry enough to make the climb out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Sebastian kept a wary eye on them, wondering if the boys in charge would mind if he got a bit of target practice in.

“So, _Master_ ,” Jim began. “If you’ve got this thing—” he jerked his thumb towards the TARDIS— “why us? I mean, all of time and space, there’s got to be somewhere more interesting than 21st century Earth.”

The Master sneered. “Because that piece of junk is broken. Oh, it works well enough to impress primitives with cheap tricks, but I’m stuck rattling between this rotting planet and that backwards dump you call home. No offense, of course.”

“None taken,” said Jim, and he smiled with false charm.

“I suppose, given the choice, I probably would’ve started there anyway,” the Master mused. “It’s a favourite of his, you know. No, I guess you wouldn’t know.”

“Who’s this again?” Jim asked innocently.

“A… colleague of mine. Always had the queerest fondness for you humans.” Sebastian and Jim ignored the slight to their species. Professional courtesy had taught them to put with a lot of strange things from clients, though the Master was an extraordinary example.

“What I don’t get,” said Sebastian, “is why you need us to do your dirty work. You’ve got your blue box, and you obviously know your way around things. Why waste time with middlemen?”

“A king doesn’t need his servants, but he’d hardly be seen without them,” the Master said airily. Sebastian smugly watched Jim fail to conceal a squirm. The Master was already beginning to strain his willingness to play the doting submissive, but the lure of the TARDIS, even with its limitations, was too much for him to pass up.

“I know you’ve figured out that I don’t want your piddly nation for its own sake,” the Master continued, “so you might as well have the whole truth. England is only the beginning, my friend. It is a stepping stone to the world, to secure the resources I need to begin the production of my fleet.” He looked out wistfully at the empty sky, absentmindedly drumming at the ground as he no doubt imagined scores of warships flooding the dark corners of the universe.

_“Jim,”_ Sebastian hissed. The Master paid him no mind, lost in thought.

“What?” said Jim irritably. Sebastian leaned over to whisper in his ear.

“You realise that taking this job is pretty much selling out the entire human race, right?”

“Of course I do. A better question would be: do I care?”

“Well, boss?”

Jim’s expression was bone-weary and bitter. “Not one bit. What has the human race ever done for me?”

Sebastian looked the closest to heartbroken a paid killer could look. He was used to Jim being cold, ruthless, detached, but this was extreme, even for him. “The whole planet, boss. Everyone you’ve ever known. Everywhere you’ve ever called home.”

Jim shook his head. “None of it matters. How could it, when you know how much else is out there? When you know that eventually, it’ll all come to this? The last scraps of humanity, huddling around a dying fire. Nothing lasts forever, Seb, and you’re a fool if you want to pretend otherwise.”

The Master smiled, apparently shaken from his reverie by Jim’s rant. Sebastian was liking that smile of his less and less. The Master apparently sensed his discomfort and smiled even wider. Sebastian shuddered and looked away, trying to pick a target among the Futurekind below.

“Besides,” Jim said distantly, “I have an idea for what we can do with that time machine of his. Our client’s not the only one who could do with the perfect false identity.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sebastian knew every day of every month of the year and a half leading up to the Contract perfectly, intimately, forwards and backwards. He could tell the date and time by the temperature of the air and the humidity that clung to his clothes. He could tell his location by the taste of the wind. Every morning— or evening, or afternoon, or night— when he woke, there was a brief moment of disorientation, but he had learned to cope. Days did not necessarily follow in chronological order. He went to sleep on a Thursday in May and woke up fifty miles north and two weeks earlier.

Today, today it was… he opened his eyes and breathed deeply. Wood. A trace of mould. Light filtering in through shuttered windows, dust dancing in sunbeams. Petrichor. It had rained last night, and would again later that day. A gentle, steady misting, but not yet, not till afternoon. August, Sebastion thought, listening to tree branches rustle outside. Early autumn, leaves just turning, not quite falling. The twenty-third. It was a nice day, he recalled. As he drifted into wakefulness, he remembered more precisely where he was and what he was doing there. He wouldn’t be enjoying the weather today. They had a full day of shooting ahead of them— film, not Seb’s preferred kind of shooting. He hadn’t held a gun since the Contract began.

Next to him, one of the others stirred. “God,” he muttered sleepily, rubbing his eyes. “Where are we?”

“The Firm’s eastern safe house,” Sebastian told him. “August twenty-third. Get your arse out of bed; we’ve got a full day of filming ahead of us. Wake the rest. I’ll get breakfast started.”

“Is it really breakfast this time?” he said hopefully. Sebastian looked closer. This one was new. They’d lost several men on a trip to Malcassairo, and Jim had selected their replacements from Sebastian’s crew. Which meant that now, he was stuck working with people who were still new to the rigors of time travel.

“It’s about an hour and a half after sunrise, so yeah, it’s really breakfast. Granted, it might be leftover takeout again; I don’t remember what kind of food I left in this place this week, but I’ll heat something up and put it on a real plate. With coffee.” He had to go easy on the new ones. Most of the team had grown close as brothers with the shared repetitions, and they looked up to Sebastian like some kind of god. A week ago, the first Archangel satellite had launched. There were more going up every day, and Sebastian (or some version of him) was present at every launch. Jim dreamed big things at the Master’s request, but it was Sebastian who actually supervised the day to day activities that made the impossible into reality.

He was nominally in charge of nearly the whole operation on some level, but this team was special. They weren’t manufacturing mobile phones, or gathering parts for the strange machine growing in the heart of the TARDIS, or hacking into databases to write the childhood history of one Harold Saxon. This was Moriarty’s pet project. While the Master was plotting the subjugation of the human race, Jim was using his time machine to make a children’s show.

There was a familiar grinding sound outside the front door, a sound like nothing on Earth. “Hurry it up,” Sebastian said to the waking crew. “The boss will be in today.”

Jim arrived in a loose T-shirt and blue jeans, looking scarcely twenty years old and practising a boyish smile. Sebastian knew he didn’t look much older himself. There had been a time when he thought the years he gave to the Contract would eventually kill him. Sometimes he still wished they would, but the legacy of Dr. Lazarus ensured he would stay young enough to see it to completion.

“Hullo, Sebby,” said Jim lazily, and his eyes were the oldest things in the room. “Let’s go tell a story.”


	5. Chapter 5

The Master knew Sebastian hated him. Sebastian was sure of it. He lied and said it was a great honour when he insinuated him into the lower ranks of UNIT, that he would witness the glorious dawn of his empire firsthand from the bridge of the Valiant. As if Seb wanted to add a footsoldier’s drudgery to the years of service he had already put into the Contract. He wasn’t a special guest, and he wasn’t fooled. He was a hostage.

But none of that mattered now. The Master had gotten what he came for. The Contract was fulfilled. Harold Saxon was heralded as Britain’s most popular Prime Minister scant hours after his election, Richard Brook had been nominated for several awards for his cherished Storyteller series, and the Archangel Network looked down over it all. Sebastian stood alongside several other UNIT double agents on board the Valiant, awaiting the appearance of the Toclafane. He knew what they were, of course. The thought made him sick, and tempered his hatred for the Master.

He had thought, once, that he hated Jim more than anyone in the world. That was a lifetime ago, the petty loathing of a dishonourably-discharged former colonel who chafed against anything resembling authority. He had discovered his feelings were more complicated than that when Jim’s obsession with Sherlock began, and when he realised he was actually jealous of the new man. Sebastian had immediately despised him. He had burned with the need to destroy Sherlock, to prove himself to Jim, to return to the carefree criminal utopia they had shared before.

Neither Jim nor Sherlock could compare to the cold, constant hatred he felt for the Master. And now that the Contract was over, he owed him no loyalty. He planned to devote every waking moment to ensuring the Master’s downfall. He wasn’t Jim. He didn’t need some elaborate scheme to “burn the heart” out of his enemies. He’d be satisfied just to see him dead.

Jim was clever, though, if misguided. He watched the momentuous proceedings via a multitude of hidden cameras Seb had smuggled onto the Valiant. He wisely wouldn’t set foot on the thing himself. So he was miles away in safety when the Toclafane assassinated the President of the United States. He watched with a strange mixture of disappointment and satisfaction as Lucy Saxon gunned down her husband. It was probably for the best, he supposed, but he had been curious to see the world under the Master’s rule. He took careful note of the trio who appeared from nowhere to oppose him. They were clearly dangerous. Useful, perhaps. He would remember their names.

Sebastian saw everything. He was there, at the heart of it all, through the Year That Never Was. He got to know Captain Jack and the Jones family, listened to the rumours of Martha’s trek around the world. He had a certain kinship with them, after all, even when he was pointing a gun at them. He understood what it was like to follow someone who made all of humanity seem dull. He met the Doctor, and wondered how his life might have been different if it weren’t Jim he was bound to. When he finally saw Jim again, he swept him up in an uncharacteristic embrace.

“Er, Sebastian,” said Jim, squirming ever so slightly, “You’re embarrassing yourself. And wrinkling my suit.”

“Don’t care,” he muttered. He didn’t tell Jim he’d barely lasted a week under the Master’s reign before the Toclafane visited Jim’s hiding place. The Master had sold him a pretty lie about traveling the stars, but the Master’s tastes in companionship tended to run towards the blond and useless. Besides, Jim was much safer dead.

“I won’t pretend I’m not glad to see you, but it’s only been a few days.”

“Not for me, it hasn’t,” he said, surprised by how rough it sounded. All the time he’d spent working on the Contract hadn’t been nearly as long as one year working directly for the Master.

“Ah,” said Jim, and Sebastian wondered if he understood what he’d been through. Probably. Probably didn’t care, though.

“Oh, and boss?” he said, when the awkwardness of hugging London’s Most Dangerous finally overcame his relief at seeing him again.

“Yes?”

“If you ever take another job for a fuckin’ Time Lord, I quit.”

Jim straightened. “Duly noted.” He smirked, and regarded Sebastian through slitted eyes. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem, though. They’re rather an endangered species.”

“Still,” Sebastian grumbled, “I don’t want to take the risk.”

“And rightly so! Troublesome lot, they are,” said Jim, suddenly cheerful. “Come on, Seb, we’ve got work to do. _Someone_ has found ‘Irish heartthrob’ Richard Brook’s early work in advertisements and uploaded it to YouTube. And I owe Sherlock a fall.”

Sebastian nodded, and followed Jim inside. Business as usual, then. He wasn’t sure how, exactly, but they appeared to have gotten the better end of the bargain. They were still alive, at any rate, and Jim was just setting a new plan in motion. Sebastian had a feeling that things hadn’t quit being interesting just yet.


	6. Epilogue

John took a deep breath and walked away from the grave. He’d said what he came to say. Someone waited for him at the main road, a thin man with a long coat and sad eyes, but he wasn’t the man John was looking for. His pinstripe suit was torn and dirty, and he wore a battered old pair of trainers.

“John Watson,” said the stranger.

“Yeah, that’s me,” said John. “D’you mind? Only I’m a bit preoccupied.” He waved angrily at his surroundings, the multitude of gravestones surrounding them.

The stranger nodded. “You’ve lost someone very dear. I… understand. More than I’d like to, to be honest. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, John.”

John stared. He’d never seen this man before in his life. What could he possibly know of his grief? And yet… he was oddly sincere. He didn’t seem to be one of the pushy journalist types trying to get a story out of the Deluded Blogger, John Watson. “Who are you?” he finally asked. “What do you want?”

The stranger shook his head. “I want you to believe. Believe in Sherlock Holmes.”

“Piss off,” said John, and turned away to get in the car.

When he looked out the window, the stranger was gone. He thought he heard an oddly familiar sound echoing across the graveyard, a sound like whalesong and clockwork.


End file.
